


Halophyte

by ozbian



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adventure, Alien Planet, Exploration, Fluff, Gen, Gen Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 02:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11957709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozbian/pseuds/ozbian
Summary: Pidge, Keith and Lance go on an underequipped, unpleasant and possibly dangerous journey through an alien landscape in an attempt to save an allied species and undo some of the damage caused by Galra occupation.If they can pull it off, there might be a beach festival in their future.





	Halophyte

"This place stinks,” Pidge grumbled, voice nasally from a pinched nose. 

She watched with envy as Lance used his crazy-long giraffe legs to step with exaggerated care over yet another exposed tree root, the tiptoe of his boot down-pointed and sinking deep into the mud. Pidge trudged around it, leaving great squelching holes in her wake. 

An accompanying squelch from behind her confirmed that Keith was still insisting on taking rear-guard.

“If you don’t like the smell, maybe you should stop wasting air complaining,” Keith said, traitorously. 

Pidge gave him a flat look over her shoulder. She knew he didn't like this place either.

The air was _moist_ , and salty, and stuffy, and heavy with the scent of decay. The sharp cries of not-birds ricocheting through the thin whippy trunks of the surrounding trees had Keith twitching near constantly, and his eyes never stopped moving. Their surroundings were dimmed by an uneven canopy of waxy green leaves, thin webs of silk and trapped insects. The trees had exposed roots arching out into the mud from a foot to two metres off the trunk. Some of the trees had so many they looked like they were wearing the skeletons of old-fashioned puffy skirts, creating dim hollow spaces like little lean-to tents floored by mud. Keith was keeping his eyes on the ground in front of him for as short a time as possible, as if he was worried he'd be ambushed during the few seconds he wasn't actively scanning their surroundings. 

And that, Pidge thought with a healthy serve of schadenfreude, was why Keith was currently the Brown Goop Paladin from the waist down and halfway up his arms.

And _that,_ Pidge realised after a moment, was probably why Keith was playing at being stoic – because, so far as Pidge understood the rules of this subjective and by now half-subconscious game, Lance was currently Winning by virtue of being the least muddy and the most oblivious to how very gross and uncomfortable this situation was. 

Pidge ducked, barely avoiding a smack to the face from one of Lance's sharp elbows, then paused a second to let him get a few steps further ahead. 

Lance’s elbows were sticking out from his sides, with his thumbs tucked up between his shoulders and the straps holding his burden tight up against his back. With that and the way he was walking, Pidge thought he looked like a stork, which was kind of fitting. 

Pidge's eyes fell on the soft-looking blue dome of material strapped to firmly to Lance's back. It was supposed to somehow use Lance's body heat to regulate its internal temperature, Pidge had gathered, but Pidge had stopped taking the priest guy's techno-religious babble seriously after he had brought out the head-measuring forceps and started questioning them about astrological alignments and hatching formations. 

The pack was interesting, though. There was a round silver protrusion at the top curve that looked like the dial from an old fashioned safe, surrounded by unfamiliar letters and blinking red diodes. Pidge had always had a weakness for blinking LEDs. She felt her fingers twitch towards it, then reminded herself firmly of Slav's dire warnings if any … investigation … of the holy backpack took place before they arrived at the sacred site. 

She shifted her focus back to her footing, careful to avoid the sinkholes created by Lance's boots.

Lance seemed pretty genuinely comfortable in here, not really bothered by the heat or the mud even with the extra weight he was carrying. 

Keith however was _definitely_ not comfortable. She could tell from the set of his eyes that he was scowling, even if the rest of his expression was hidden by the mud-streaked red bandanna tied over his nose and mouth.

Maybe Galra had really sensitive noses? That would be a good reason to hide them here. But then wouldn't the Galra just send sentries anyway?

“The smell’s not _that_ bad,” Lance said brightly, from his face, which was about a stratosphere above the noxious gases of decay unleashed with every step they took, “and afterwards, we get to go to a beach festival!”

But it's already _so hot_ , Pidge thought, and _sticky_ , and we're not even out in the sun yet. 

Out loud she said, "Why would I go to a place where I'm not only in direct sunlight, but also getting hit by refracted light from the water, and standing on burning ground-up rock, with the wind burning my face, and the smell of rotting fish even though there are _no fish anywhere,_ and then spend the next. 

week peeling out of my skin like a snake?" 

Pidge had been tricked before. She knew that Matt's anime beach episodes were all a foul, despicable lie. 

"Aww, c'mon Pidge," Lance wheedled. “We’re already short on people! It was never a real party back home unless half the town showed up.”

Lance started to yammer on about home, his voice as animated as usual but his movements unusually careful and steady. The backpack remained seated against his back and barely shifted despite his ducking and stepping through the closely packed roots and tree trunks. 

Pidge was vaguely aware of Lance talking warmly about beach parties and burying dads and fire pits and sand jogging and diving contests and crabbing and story games and, just, a _lot_ of people. From the casual and familiar way he talked about them, and a few half familiar names sprinkled in, they were probably mostly family? But wow, there was a lot of them. Pidge’s family unit was a lot more nuclear.

No wonder he's so crazy lonely out here, Pidge thought, not for the first time, and sighed to herself. Yeah, she was definitely going to get sunburnt later. 

A sudden shriek off to their left had Keith hissing at them to get in position, and they stood back to back for a minute before seeing a little bat-lizard thing launch itself from a nearby root cave into the air on iridescent blue wings, a little brown slug thing in its toothy little maw. It was kinda cute. 

"Alright," Keith said after a minute of nothing else happening. "Let's keep moving." 

They began squelching forward again, and Pidge let herself return to her thoughts, and Lance return to his rambling, and Keith return to his making sure they don't die from adorable alien fauna.

Maybe she could rig an umbrella holster together for KERry? Would her gravity repulsors need to be juiced up to deal with additional weight for a sustained period? Would the repulsors even work against something as loosely packed as sand or would the grains get blasted in all direction? Could she weaponise sand-blasts for on-shore combat? Maybe she should run it by Hunk when she gets back.

She let her thoughts drift and paid just enough attention to Lance's rambling to appreciate it drowning out the calls of the bat-lizards, and to take note when it seemed like he had started talking to someone else. “... most awesome sandcastle _ever_ ...still be there when you make it? ... might be an _actual_ sized castle for you guys ...”

Pidge stared quizzically at the back of Lance's not sweat-spiked hair for a minute. Then she saw him let loose a hand, reach back and pat gently at the bottom edge of the backpack. Lance had found a captive audience, Pidge thought, and smirked a little.

After a moment Lance drew his hand back and tucked it into the lower strap wrapped around his hips, giving himself a sassy hip-cock and one vestigial elbow-wing. Lance is ridiculous, Pidge thought, not for the thirtieth time. 

Lance was ridiculous, and Pidge was bored. 

She let her foot drop a bit too heavily on her own next step and felt a jab against the pad of her foot. She lifted her boot, holding tight to a nearby root, and looked down at the depressed mud. 

There was a dull-ended stick pointing up from her fading footstep. Its tip would have been just under the surface of the mud. She pressed at it with the side of her boot, and it went easily, then sproinged back into place as soon as she let up the pressure. Huh, she thought. New growth maybe?

“What the heck are these trees even anchored to?” she muttered, curious. Keith stopped next to her, and she looked up at him. He returned her stare for a few moments then shrugged. 

“It feels like my feet just keep sinking until there’s too much pressure for the mud to get pushed out from underneath them anymore,” Keith muttered quietly. His eyes flicked up again, marking Lance’s position ahead and then continuing in a scan of the area. “But if I move too fast or something, there's always a little bit further for me to sink.” He looked uneasy. “I don’t think there’s anything solid down there, not for awhile.”

“Guys, come on!” Lance called from ahead. “We gotta drop the kids off and get outta here before the tide comes back in.” 

Pidge sighed, then said “Hang on, just let me check our trajectory.” 

Lance stopped obligingly and so Pidge pulled the sacred nesting ground detector from her belt. She squinted at the grid-marked screen. It was set to give off an alarm if they veered off-track, and Pidge had definitely made sure that feature was working before they left the boat, but it hadn’t gone off since then. She didn’t really feel like she needed to check it again, but who know how old the thing was. 

After a few moments of theatrical humming and hawing, twisting her upper body to face various directions, and minimising and maximising the display screen, Pidge finally said, “It looks like we’re still going the right way?" Which Pidge was a bit surprised at, because everything looked the same in here. "But there’s a patch of green fuzzy stuff moving at us from the direction we want to go. This display is pretty abstract, I don’t know what it is.”

Keith stepped up beside her and gave her shoulder a firm push in Lance's direction. She took the hint and picked up the pace, then turned with her back to Lance's. She shifted over when Mr Rear Guard arrived, each of them taking a segment of the surrounding area to keep an eye on, then turned her attention back to the display. 

"There’s not much meta data on this," Pidge said, frustrated. "I don't know what the display's reacting to, so I can’t tell you what the cloud means. It’s getting closer though.” She sighed. 

Pidge growled to herself. This would all be _so much_ _easier_ if she had been allowed to bring her own equipment. But the High Technologist had been pretty adamant that any equipment other than the sacred relics would put everything at risk, and somehow Slav had ended up siding with him. She couldn't really blame the priest guy, it was his species at risk, but Slav was supposed to be a _scientist_ , for crow's sake. 

"Huh," Lance said thoughtfully. He looked up, took a few steps forward and braced his weight against one of the thicker roots, then shifted as though about to lift a foot up onto it. After a second Lance froze, then put his foot back down. 

"Either of you guys feel like climbing?" he asked, a bit sheepishly, and patted the strap at his waist. "I'm sort of living for two thousand right now." 

Tactically, Pidge thought, it would make the most sense for me to do it, so their best fighter can be on the ground to guard the MacGuffin. (Pidge told herself _not_ to say that last bit out loud, because Lance would probably take it wrong. Hunk would be proud of her.) She wasn’t an ideal height for tree climbing, but she was the lightest and arguably the more agile. Also Pidge felt a bit useless with all this carefully defunct and gutted technology, and she did not like that. 

“Pidge?” Keith asked, still keeping an eye on their surroundings. 

“Got it,” she said, and hoisted herself out of the mud and onto the root system of one of the bigger, sturdier looking trees. She clambered up to the tree trunk and shimmied up as far as she could. Pidge got about halfway up the tree before it began to sway too much to risk going higher. 

Pidge could small bits of debris falling on her head and looked up, trusting her glasses to protect her eyes. 

She was pretty close to the canopy of some of her trees’ shorter neighbours. The yellowish threads stretched between the trees above looked more like ladder nets up close than spider webs, and it was being used as one by the weird many-legged insects scuttling across it. Their bodies were oblong and about pinkie-length, and their legs were fuzzy like pipe-cleaners, long and folded over. As her tree swayed Pidge noted that the webs linking to it stretched and contracted easily without sagging. She might try getting a sample on the way back. 

“Anything?” Keith called softly from below, and she could actually hear him. Huh, she thought. The bat-lizards had finally shut up. That probably wasn’t good.

Pidge glanced down to the others, orienting herself based on the direction Lance was facing, and peered ahead. 

She was up far enough that the only things blocking her line of sight were the spindly tree-trunks, although the fans of roots kept her from getting a good look at the muddy ground. The dappled spots of light that she could see, the ones that should have hit the floor, were glinting oddly off something else, something moving against the mud. Something squirmy, with maybe a hint of scuttle.

“There’s something moving, really close to the ground,” Pidge called down. “I can’t get a clear look, but it’s happening over a pretty large area. Still heading towards us, maybe a minute away?” She squinted more tightly. “It could be bugs, or some kind of chunky liquid, it’s hard to tell.” 

Pidge looked down and saw Keith and Lance standing back to back, but not as closely as usual due to the domed backpack sitting against Lance's back. They both had bayards in hand, but not yet activated. Allura had insisted that they bring their weapons, even Slav had been pretty clear about the possibilities of that going wrong. 

Pidge's eyes fixed on the backpack. She hoped it wasn't too heavy, because there was no way Lance was gonna put it down. 

“Guys, I think you need to climb."

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta read, constructive criticism welcome :)


End file.
